Clock Frequencies and Boost Clock Analysis

Most modern processors feature a capability called "Boost" or "Turbo" that automatically overclocks the CPU beyond the nominal clock frequency provided certain conditions related to thread count, power draw, and temperatures are met. Our testing on this page investigates what actual real-life frequencies can be achieved in such scenarios. The data below presents the minimum, maximum, and average clock frequency of a given core/thread-count combination for a typical heavy workload. We start with one thread and go all the way up to the CPU's maximum thread count while at the same time measuring the average clock frequency for these timed testing runs.



Our performance results for the Ryzen 5 3600 are extremely close to the 3600X, especially with multi-threaded applications, so we compared their clock frequencies in the chart below.



As you can see, Ryzen 5 3600 boosts to a single clock speed of 4.2 GHz all the time, no matter how many cores are active. The Ryzen 5 3600X in comparison boosts slightly higher for low-threaded workloads, but with eight or more threads loaded, it ends up at pretty much the same 4.2 GHz as the Ryzen 5 3600.